On Their Knees

The first drama of the new session of Congress took place last week, five hours after the President had delivered his State of the Union message, and after most Senators and Congressmen had pronounced their appraisals to newsmen and gone home to dinner. Just after dark, Ohio's white-haired Republican Senator John W. Bricker walked into the White House and made his way to Ike's second-floor study to meet with the President and an assortment of Administration brass, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Attorney General Herbert Brownell and Senate Majority Leader Bill Knowland. The problem: what to do about the Bricker amendment (TIME, July 13), which has turned into a time-bomb threat to both G.O.P. unity and White House-congressional relations.

The Administration opposed the Bricker amendment at hearings last spring, but between sessions, John Bricker and his disciples carried their case through the nation. Bricker returned to Congress last week with not only the backing of his powerful old ally, the American Bar Association, but the endorsement of the American Medical Association and major veterans' groups. The plain fact confronting the conference in Ike's study: John Bricker had assembled enough Republican and Democratic votes to get his amendment through the Congress, and enough support in enough states to get the amendment into the Constitution.

Sticking Points. Brownell, Dulles, Knowland & Co. worked hard to get a compromise with the Bricker forces, but inevitably, both sides ran into two basic sticking points:

No. 1. Bricker insists that Congress shall have the power to regulate all executive agreements; the Administration will not yield these powers--which are all too slender in an era when events demand fast, detailed executive action in foreign relations.

No. 2. The amendment specifies that no treaty shall become the law of the land until both houses of Congress have passed enabling legislation. Bricker wants Congress to determine which treaties require enabling legislation; the Administration insists that the President must have the power to decide.

Dedicated Man. John Bricker's mood is one of dauntless dedication. He is willing to search for a compromise, if he can find one that suits his conscience. But he complains that the Administration does not really know its own mind. "It's my Administration," he says. "It's a Republican Administration. I want to get along with them. But they don't seem to want to understand the issue. They haven't advanced one cogent argument against the principles of the resolution."

Bill Knowland is duty bound to call up the Bricker amendment for action in the Senate in the first weeks of the session. If no compromise can be reached with Bricker by then, the Administration has two fearsome choices: 1) tight-lipped acceptance of defeat, and all that it may mean in crippling the operation of U.S. foreign affairs; 2) a wide-open fight between wings of the Republican Party, with subsequent peril to the Administration's legislative program.

Said Vice President Nixon at week's end: "All of the Republicans are virtually on their knees praying, but it'll take a miracle to bring this thing off."

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